It comes from a passage in "The Cleanest Race" by B.R. Myers[1], which I recommend as a lens into the internal effects of North Korea's propaganda
>"One colleague told me he finds the North Korean personality cult too absurd to take seriously; indeed, he doubts whether even the leadership believes it. But no regime would go to such enormous expense, year in, year out for sixty years, to inculcate into its citizens a worldview to which it did not itself subscribe. (The only institution in the country that did not miss a beat during the famine of the mid-1990s was the propaganda apparatus.”
There was another book on North Korea which corroborated this statement with actual numbers; I'm having trouble pulling it up at the moment.
That's more a statement of just how backwards North Korea is in an increasingly prosperous world in which the median standard of living is at an all-time high and continues to rise by the year, famines are between extremely rare and non-existent, and global poverty is at an all-time low. It looks increasingly like North Korea may be among the very last of the failed state hold-outs. Even Cuba looks like it's set to change considerably for the better in the coming years.
> "But no regime would go to such enormous expense, year in, year out for sixty years, to inculcate into its citizens a worldview to which it did not itself subscribe."
That seems like an odd and unsubstantiated assertion.
>"One colleague told me he finds the North Korean personality cult too absurd to take seriously; indeed, he doubts whether even the leadership believes it. But no regime would go to such enormous expense, year in, year out for sixty years, to inculcate into its citizens a worldview to which it did not itself subscribe. (The only institution in the country that did not miss a beat during the famine of the mid-1990s was the propaganda apparatus.”
There was another book on North Korea which corroborated this statement with actual numbers; I'm having trouble pulling it up at the moment.
[1] https://www.amazon.com/Cleanest-Race-Koreans-Themselves-Matt...